Gentle Ladies Dragon Man, 2021, (Acrylic and graphite on canvas) by Jason Fox was part of the group show Time-Slip at Petzel Gallery in New York in 2021.
Feb 162024
Feb 162024
This mural was created by Jose Mertz for the 2017 edition of the SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.
For more work by the artist, also check out his Instagram.
Feb 152024
“The Flameless Green Dragon”, 2018, Elm and acrylic
“In Rhythm”, 2018, Elm and acrylic; and “Water Music”, 2002, Inkjet photocollage on paper
“Introvert”, 2019, Elm; “Engendering Life”, 2020, Green soapstone
Two left sculptures made of Italian translucent alabaster and “Harboring Emptiness”, 2021, Maple and acrylic
Above are several works from Barbara Stanczak Spirit and Matter, the artist’s recent exhibition at Akron Art Museum. Stanczak’s sculptures are energetic shapes created in partnership with the natural materials used.
From the museum’s web page-
Barbara Stanczak’s sculptures are born from an essential combination: the artist’s creative vision and the natural qualities of her materials. This two-sided collaboration remains in effect throughout Stanczak’s entire process of conceiving and creating an artwork. A piece of wood or stone presents initial possibilities that help to set a direction, but invariably the course will change—the substance may be so hard as to resist carving, or it may contain internal structures that must be accommodated. But the artist does not surrender her own interests, as she has found that a successful work must become the physical embodiment of a rich and valuable idea. In her own words, “I can only hold onto my idea of the whole by letting go of ‘mine’ and focusing on ‘our.’ The material becomes a partner who needs my patience, respect, thoughtfulness, cooperation, skill, and persistence.”
Stanczak committed to working with wood and stone only after a long process of discovery. Born in Germany in 1941, she moved to the United States in 1960 to assist her grandfather in painting church frescoes, and later worked in handmade paper, metal, and a variety of other media. She also worked alongside her husband, Julian Stanczak, whose paintings and prints were celebrated at the Akron Art Museum with a one-artist show in 2013. As her own career evolved throughout her thirty-seven-year tenure as a professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Barbara carved her first wooden sculpture in 1992. “I was tired of searching,” she recalls. “It was time to arrive!”
Stanczak continues to find wood and stone compelling because, as she puts it, they are constantly “teasing, tempting, and provoking me to see more, to see beyond, to see the micro and the macro of the universe.” She finds these universal qualities not in immediately recognizable forms like leaves and flowers, but rather in dense rings and layers, subtle features formed over decades or even thousands of years. As Stanczak exercises her own intuition, she aligns it with these natural processes. As the artist and the materials harmonize, it is as if two forms of intelligence are working together—as if spirit and matter are not so separate as one might expect.
Feb 142024
Esterio Segura’s Goodbye My Love, 2013, three sculptures created with fiberglass and automobile paint, are currently on view at Tampa Museum of Art.
From the museum about the work-
A new acquisition to the Museum’s permanent collection, Goodbye My Love represents Esterio Segura’s (Cuban, b. 1970) ongoing exploration of the meaning of airplanes and flight. Produced in multiple editions at different scales, this version is nearly the largest. In describing the series, Segura explained, “In this work, the reference to the airplane hybridizes with a reference to another well-known universal symbol: a simplified image of the heart. This is fused with an easily understood title with several meanings, from the most corny and sentimental to the most controversial, from a political and social standpoint. With this work, I reference the experience of uprooting, nostalgia, memory, loss—how we experience the breakdown of everything we love.”
He discusses the work in the video below in a bit more detail.
Feb 112024
“1958 Championship Game ( Colts/NY Giants )” by artist Jack Howard-Potter
“Formation of the American Football League (1959)” by artist Katherine Stanek
The sculptures above are two of The ELEVEN, a public art project created by The Pro Football Hall of Fame and Arts in Stark, located in downtown Canton, Ohio. The commissioned art works each represent one of the eleven greatest moments in professional football.
The first sculpture pictured, Colts/NY Giants Championship Game (1958) is by Jack Howard Potter. The 30-foot tall steel sculpture celebrates Baltimore Colts player Raymond Berry.
The second, Formation of the American Football League (1959) is by artist Katherine Stanek. The concrete sculpture represents the founders of the league and the use of television as part of its growth. On a nearby information plaque the artist states that she “wanted to celebrate the AFL founders by putting eight giant heads on top of 1960’s TV sets, as if they were ancient heroes in some Roman ruins”. Stanek also runs her own gallery in Philadelphia.
Feb 092024
This sculpture, The Only Other, 2021, by the artist Midabi, was located in Union Square Park in NYC from June 2021- June 2022.
It is currently located adjacent to Palm Springs Art Museum in California.
Feb 062024
These two murals, created by artists Dasic Fernandez (left) and Werc Alvarez (right), are located in the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
Feb 062024
Multicolored Lady by Dasic Fernandez was created for the 2016 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.
Also check out his Instagram for more recent work.
Feb 032024
This mural was created by Florida artist Truman Adams and is located in Bradenton.
For more recent work, also check out his Instagram.
Feb 012024
Black and part Black Birds in America: (Grackle, Cardinal & Rose-breasted Grosbeak), 2020, by Kerry James Marshall, was part of the group exhibition 20/20 at David Zwirner gallery in NYC in December of 2020. The painting is part of a series that explores black identity, his love of birding, and by the history and work of John James Audubon.
Below is an excerpt from a New York Times article about the work and its Audubon connection-
“There’s a disconnect between the house that’s built and the birds,” Mr. Marshall said of the crow and grackle. “It’s not designed for them, you know?” The scene considers, he said, “the pecking order.”
The series itself has been brewing in Mr. Marshall’s mind for eight or nine years, he said, and he began painting the works just before transmissions of the coronavirus accelerated in the United States in March.
A casual bird enthusiast who has been fascinated by Audubon’s draughtsmanship since he was a child, Mr. Marshall has long put Black protagonists at the center of his complex, richly layered compositions. “Many Mansions” (1994), one of his large-scale depictions of housing projects, features three Black men gardening — and, not incidentally, there are two bluebirds holding up a banner, too. The pointed inclusion of Black figures is part of what he has called a “counter-archive” to the familiar, white-centered story of Western art.
For the new series, the images hinge on Audubon’s own racial heritage: Many people believe he was, as Mr. Marshall’s title suggests, “part Black” — born in what is now Haiti, as Jean Rabin, to a white, plantation-owning father and a Creole chambermaid who may have been of racially-mixed descent. But, the theory goes, he was able to pass as white.